We can land a probe on a comet 300 million miles away.....

[darmstadt]

But yet we still can't land a plane with the windows blinds closed

Live: Rosetta comet landing - BBC News

I have a few friends working on that and was having a BBQ a couple of weeks ago with them, looks interesting. As for the planes, another friend was working at Airbus in Hamburg a while ago when they were developing the A380 and the original plan was for that to have no windows and the prototypes he flew on actually had none.

[suityou01]

I have a few friends working on that and was having a BBQ a couple of weeks ago with them, looks interesting. As for the planes, another friend was working at Airbus in Hamburg a while ago when they were developing the A380 and the original plan was for that to have no windows and the prototypes he flew on actually had none.

[NotAllThere]

OMG - it's full of stars!

[NickFitz]

Has it crashed yet?

Just asking, like.

No!

"Touchdown! My new address: 67P! #CometLanding - @Philae2104" https://twitter.com/Philae2014/statu...64514051735552

[DiscoStu]

What happens afterwards? Does it stay there until the oil runs out?

[darmstadt]

Humor'ish

[centurian]

Apparently it appears it might have bounced when the anchoring harpoons fired.

Now it's easy for me to be an armchair rocket scientist, but a few hours ago I was pondering how they were going to attach it to the surface. I was thinking - they can't use harpoons because of Newton's third law - equal and opposite reaction and all that

[NickFitz]

Apparently it appears it might have bounced when the anchoring harpoons fired.

Now it's easy for me to be an armchair rocket scientist, but a few hours ago I was pondering how they were going to attach it to the surface. I was thinking - they can't use harpoons because of Newton's third law - equal and opposite reaction and all that

The harpoons didn't fire.

Still, you would have thought that a team of rocket scientists would have thought of that some time in the twenty-five years they've been working on it.

Oh, hang on, they did: the idea was that a thruster on top of it would fire at the same time as the harpoons were shot into the surface, to counteract the recoil.

[suityou01]

The harpoons didn't fire.

Still, you would have thought that a team of rocket scientists would have thought of that some time in the twenty-five years they've been working on it.

Oh, hang on, they did: the idea was that a thruster on top of it would fire at the same time as the harpoons were shot into the surface, to counteract the recoil.

Redundancy. And I don't mean the scientists.

[NotAllThere]

Current status is that it has landed (twice) and is still landed, and is stable.